The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring - specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neuro feedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies.

Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM is a somatically based psychotherapy that helps bring into awareness the parts of self that are disorganized and dysfunctional.

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: Why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle

As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over 20 years. It Didn't Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms.

Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human

A scientist's exploration into the mysteries of the human mind. Neuroscience studies the brain, but what does science have to say about the mind? A full examination of what we mean by the term "mind" has traditionally been the province of philosophers, but what might neuroscience teach us about it? How does the mind differ from consciousness? And how do we know who we really are?

Narcissistic and toxic mothers are often injured in their childhoods by their own stunted emotional development. In order to fully develop into a healthy adult, we need a very nurturing and emotionally validating environment. Toxic and narcissistic mothers often grow up without that nurturing. They have jumped through hoops and tailored themselves to others around them. They have been invited to be a part of mind games, lies, and manipulation. They may have been told repeatedly that they weren't wanted.

The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration

Research suggests that the presence of the therapist, and how the therapist truly forges a connection with the client in therapy, are the most crucial factors affecting the client’s healing process. An engaged, committed, caring therapist who is mindful of his or her own self - and how that self relates to the client - is the key determinant of how well that client will respond to therapy.

The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD from the Inside Out

The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD from the Inside Out maps out practical aspects of healing from stress-related disorders and provides immediate first-aid techniques that help alleviate the most intense symptoms of traumatic stress in a small amount of time. It shows how the latest findings in neuroscience research support both ancient and contemporary methods of trauma treatment from around the world. In recent years, it has become clearer than ever before that the mind, body, and spirit are connected, and that an illness affecting one affects the whole.

The Neurobiology of 'We': How Relationships, the Mind, and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are

If you think your brain and mind are one, think again. According to the interpersonal neurobioligy pioneer Daniel J. Siegel, the mind actually emerges out of the interaction between your brain and relationships. Now, with The Neurobiology of "We", Dr. Siegel invites you on a journey to discover this revolutionary new model of human development - one that can positively transform trauma, move you from stress to calm and equanimity, and promote well-being for you, your family, or even your community.

The Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom

The ancient Toltecs believed that life, as we perceive it, is a dream. We each live in our own personal dream, and these come together to form the dream of the planet, or the world in which we live. Problems arise when our perception of the dream becomes clouded with negativity, drama, and judgment (of ourselves and others), because it's in these moments of suffering that we have forgotten that we are the architects of our own reality and we have the power to change our dream if we choose.

Publisher's Summary

Learn About Trauma and Traumatic Disorders in a Fraction of the Time!

Bessel Van der Kolk, MD, is the author of The Body Keeps the Score. In this book, Bessel examines the ways that trauma can affect people and how they can recover from past traumatic events. When a person experiences trauma, it will change the wiring in their brain, and this will cause a change in the way that a person views their life and everyday situations. Trauma has a negative effect on both the body and mind in a way that will prevent a person affected by trauma from enjoying the present moment.

Bessel and his colleagues have been researching trauma and the people affected by it for almost 50 years. This journey began for Dr. Van der Kolk when he met with Vietnam War veterans who were suffering from the trauma they experienced in the war. This trauma caused these veterans to struggle with the transition of coming back home and resuming normal lives. These trauma sufferers all had certain symptoms that they shared. The traumatic events that were experienced at war were constantly being replayed in the brains of the veterans. In addition to this, the veterans appeared to be numb or indifferent to everyday life, and they would become angry very easily.

Dr. Van der Kolk is considered to be the very first doctor to diagnose and recognize post-traumatic stress disorder, which is also known as PTSD. He was also one of the first doctors to identify cures and methods for assisting people who are affected by PTSD so that they can once again live normal lives.

The summary is a simple overview of the first few chapters. It does not address the many useful therapies or solution to deal with Trauma and its resolution. The summary highlights the open and honest approach of the author but defines detailed parts as "confusing" or awkward. The is the second time I have listened to a summary and would not recommend them. I was hoping it would provide a useful summary of a great book to assist me in learning it more deeply. It pales in comparison to the real thing.